Surprised? Well, don’t be I will give you reasons. Last week I have posed a rhetoric question : Do we really need newspapers? Since then there was a good discussion about pros and cons. If I were to quote Yash alone it would be a post.
Let me summarize the comments from Yash, Anand, GP & Arun:
- Newspaper is a daily ritual. Its convenience is unmatched. The laptop’s, mobile’s and Kindle’s do not even come close when taking the news to the toilet. This is almost unanimous.
- News is not the only thing on the papers. There are many other things like cartoons, sudoku’s and lot of other fun stuff. To amass that information via RSS feeds would be just too difficult and not worth the effort.
- We can get away from newspapers only when someone provides a low-cost Amazon Kindle as an election rhetoric. This would be a election rhetoric 10 years from now – LOL.
- You and I are not the only people in India. I totally agree with this.
Though, the comments are made with some solid arguments my conviction did not come from that. My conviction came from my own experience. I got up today and found that there is no power. For some reason Sunday is the favorite day for power cuts. Then I realized that I cannot connect and I cannot get my daily dose of news and opinions. I had no alternative but to turn to Sunday Times.
You must be thinking that this dude reads ‘Times of India’. Well, I read a lot of stuff but Times of India is something I usually stay away from. They usually recycle news between Times of India and Economic Times over a period of item. Their coverage of murders, scams is impeccable. They usually miss the big picture and lack focus.
There is an exception though. Sunday Times op-ed page is my only favorite in Times of India. It has columns from Swaminathan Aiyer, Gurucharan Das, MJ Akbar all in the same place. It will be good one hour read for me. That one hour would have been difficult without the papers. Besides, I don’t know if it is just a one hour power cut or not.
My own experience, comments above and the fact that only 32 million Indians are online has convinced me that newspapers are here to stay. For a country like India where the power cuts are ubiquitous 24/7 connectivity is a problem. Until we solve our power issues we cannot solve our connectivity issues.
Until then, we need newspapers.
*Image source : Inju via flickr